foreign ER president of digital government Institute thank you for joining us for those of you new to DGI thank you for joining I hope you enjoy the program our topic today is empowering the government Workforce with data opm's Workforce Evolution before we get started there are a few things I'd like to share first you can submit a question in the audience console we will address questions at the end of the presentations or we'll forward to the panel immediately following the program if we can't get to it you can participate via the closing poll and the post show survey anyone participating today that's interested in receiving CPE credits to qualify you must be online for the entire program you must respond to the poll question and the post event survey and DJI will email you a CPE certificate at the completion probably a little bit later this week we will also be forwarding a link up to the archive so you can do it again or share it with the colleague it's now my pleasure to introduce our moderator Jonathan album Federal CTO of servicenow in this role Jonathan works with federal agencies to deliver digital workflows that create great experience is an unlock productivity prior he held a variety of senior executive positions in the federal government including serving as the CIO of USDA where we led the development of usda's I.T modernization strategy including Cloud Network modernization and enhanced information security Jonathan take it away um thank you Mike uh as Mike shared I'm Jonathan album and I'm your moderator for today's panel uh Federal CTO for servicenow and but before servicenows Mike shared I was a CIO in the federal government for many years and throughout my federal career teams and I were always on a mission to modernize systems and manage data and really all with an effort to improve the way that the employees and our agencies were able to do their work and with today's president's management agenda and it's and its primary pillar for strengthening empowering and empowering the federal Workforce we really have a Clarion call for focusing on employee experience and you know from my federal perennial firsthand that when we provide our employees with great experiences we create a really engaged Workforce and that leads to better customer experiences overall for people that rely on and and use the federal government and across government there's no more there's no agency that's more involved in this focus on employee experience the federal Workforce than the office of personnel management they're charged with creating really the next generation of the federal Workforce and you know key to these efforts are employee experience then the use of data as a strategic asset is really a key to help us make informed decisions on policies and programs and and think about the services that the federal government can offer so today we have three excellent Executives from OPM to join us in a conversation about the role that the agency is playing and we're going to have a kind of a conversation that talks about government-wide approaches we're going to talk about data and we're really going to talk about how we innovate upon solutions that exist in the federal government and make it better experience for employees that that serve the American public so I want to now introduce our panelists so as I call your name please share a little bit about your background and your experience with employees we'll uh we'll start with Melvin Brown who is the Deputy CIO for opium I hey Jonathan thanks for having me and excited to be here Melvin Brown Deputy CIO here been here a little bit a little a little more than two years now uh excited about what we're doing um and and in close partnership with our our business partners you know we're re-looking at How We Do Employee Engagement and we're starting to look at the data that's coming out of our data shop to help us make data-driven decisions and so I'm excited about that uh pushing the envelope on pushing the tools that we need um to the employees at the end of the the Spectrum if you will so putting business intelligence tools on their desktops so that they can um create those data-driven decisions even inside their organization so excited to be here and happy to talk about this stuff thank you Melvin um next I'd like to have Steve Krauss say hello Steve is the senior advisor in the HR Quality Service management office kuzmo you might know it as and um also part of the HR line of business at OPM hi Steve hi Jonathan thanks for having me here um yeah so just to give a brief introduction to myself um I've been in the federal government now for about eight years and uh that entire time I've worked on programs that have involved government-wide transformation of one business function or another GSA I led the stand-up of the government-wide category Management program in the acquisition space about two years ago I came over to OPM and I lead two offices here the hrq smoke and the HR line of business the HR line of business is charged with working across agencies to define the set of standards that agencies agree to converge upon in the way that they manage human Capital Management functions and the qsmo is charged with standing up a Marketplace of both Federal and Commercial solutions that agencies can use in operationalizing those standards so that's what I do here thanks Steve and last and certainly not least is Ted kauk who is the deputy director of human capital data management and modernization and also the chief data officer for OPM Ted welcome uh hi Jonathan it's great to be with you and and the audience and our team at OPM here um had a chance to come over to OPM and serve in the chief data officer role over the past couple of years in my previous role I served as the chief data officer at the United States Department of Agriculture where we stood up um Enterprise analytics platforms and programs to be able to enable the agency to leverage its data as strategic asset and really fundamental to both of these efforts has been the focus on customer experience and employee experience in the use of data so looking forward to talking about the connection between those things with you all today um thanks Ted I think we're going to have a great conversation I want to go ahead and get started with uh a question for you about the OPM data strategy you published data strategy in March of this of this year can you kick us off by talking a little bit about the data vision and goals uh that the agency has sure and I think our our data strategy is really laser focused on uh employee experience uh from from kind of kind of conception to kind of where we are right now um you know OPM is the Chief Human Resources agency it's the Personnel policy manager for the federal government uh we are uniquely positioned to help rebuild Empower and support the federal Workforce and so we conceived of our data strategy within that uh within that construct and mandate as part of our larger OPM strategic plan and we have four goals in our data strategy they're really focused on two key core areas and they're around the ways in which OPM can provide government-wide support uh to agencies in a couple of key areas the first and of course I think central to the conversation today is our ability to develop a strong data-driven culture in a highly skilled data analytics Workforce across the federal government and the ways in which OPM can contribute to that with any uh individual agencies data strategy and certainly as we're thinking about this government-wide people are our most important asset to be able to leveraging data and so we've set a couple of key goals within our work at OPM as part of our data strategy to ensure agencies have those right the right resources there the first is really thinking about the competencies needed at the the leadership level we did observe that you know other countries like Australia had Incorporated data fluency into their Executive Core competencies so we've set a goal of updating the government-wide Executive Core competencies to include data fluency as part of building that pipeline for the right competencies that we'll need now going forward into the future and how that will translate into the kinds of development employees as they move up to leadership chain are engaging in the second is really around developing the data skills of the federal Workforce and this involves having the right competencies we released AI competencies earlier uh this year we're also have been engaging in government-wide hiring actions for for data analysts there's been a couple of those and have been successful in bringing on data scientists who are really attracted by you know the the competitive Mission we have in government uh we've been working with the chico Council and Steve on promoting human capital data collaboration so that we can work with practitioners across government in better using human capital data and again really focused on the skills of the broader Workforce those are a couple of examples the other area that we're focused on is um related to the fact that OPM has data on uh really the entire employee life cycle we have data on uh 2.1 current federal employees federal retirees and annuitants we have data on Talent acquisition benefits demographics and OPM is really centrally positioned to be able to provide government-wide decision support for agencies so along with our data strategy in April it's been about four full months since we did release that at opm.gov forward slash data if folks are interested in in seeing the full strategy we also published our first data portal with some public data products and we've been working with agencies using human-centered design to be able to answer common questions and to democratize access to this data so our other goals are really focused on delivering high quality human capital data products across government that inform and support critical decision making this includes dashboards we've been working on related to demographics and attrition and federal employee Viewpoint survey so we can make that available to agencies across government at scale of course there are also a number of questions that only OPM can answer that we're also working on from an analytics perspective you know in the area of at Patrician for example being able to focus on where attrition is most acute what's the makeup of the departing staff and then really being able to ramp up the maturity and analytics from descriptive to to Diagnostic and prescriptive that's something we're going to be focused on uh this year but that that idea of having a seamless customer experience for a One-Stop shop for agencies to come in and access government-wide decision support tools and the ability for federal employees to have a seamless experience with access to their own data is really Central to our earlboard data strategy that's going to require collaboration across all of our programs so we have a common approach for developing those products and obviously tons and tons of coordination and support from the CIO office and building the technology platforms that will that we'll need to be able to support this work so really excited about where we are with that strategy uh very good Ted now um for those of you that don't know in addition to Ted's roles Chief data officer at OPM he leads the Chief data officer Council for the federal government and head just for a moment you can share a little bit about how opm's data strategy and some of the government-wide data sets you're describing may have an impact or what kind of support you're getting from cdos across across the federal landscape yeah I mean the CDO Council started at the uh with the Evidence Act back in January of 2020 so we're coming up on four full years of having this new required role in government so we've really been keeping an eye on what is working for agency cdos in developing those programs uh and what is it going to take for us to get to let's say CDO 2.0 as we're kind of moving into the first four years so one of the common problems that we've been focused on over the over the past several years of the council's existence has been how do we share decision support at scale and so we actually worked in the pandemic to develop some government-wide dashboards we ran into some uh you know benefits but also some challenges regarding the existing infrastructure and that dovetailed into a report that we did on human capital dashboards and how we might share decision support across government so that report which we published I think is we're also implementing some of those recommendations from the CDO council at OPM so there's a good through line between the kinds of common problems that are being surfaced Council and the work that we're doing at OPM of course we're also focused on data skills and those kinds of efforts that OPM has committed to in the strategy and then one other area that I think is just worth noting is agencies have also been moving toward this uh this Enterprise analytics approach where they're standing up these common platforms they're beginning to integrate data so they can leverage it at scale and so we're observing where those agencies have have moved those things forward and it turns out that's where they've had the most success in terms of occurring resources and being able to deliver value to the organization so we're we're codifying that in some reports on Enterprise analytics and another one on what it means to be a data driven CDO right we're asking our organizations to be data driven how do we measure our own success in the CDO function so we can step up to that level next level of maturity so those are some through lines and are you seeing uh that government-wide focus on on employee data and employee experience is that you know a thread throughout all the agencies I mean it's the most common percent potentially the most common kind of data that every agency is going to be managing yeah I mean what you typically see is that agencies will either start with Mission data or they will start with the data that's common you know in terms of HR so at USD this is where we started was how do we answer those common questions that everyone is trying to answer around time to hire attrition so that we we can reduce the manual level of effort for those agencies again coming back to customer experience and accessing you know the the answers to those common questions so that challenge has come up I think across government as a common challenge where agencies may have access to data from a set of component agencies but they don't have that Enterprise view so that's one area where opium can deliver value but it's also an area where agencies themselves I think continue to lean in honesty for a second and and Steve the uh this government-wide concept you know uh whether it's employee data or any other kind of data or management process around employee experience I'm curious from your role in the HR fuse mode online business what you're seeing and you know what data do you have access to what is that data telling you well so a couple of things so so first of all Ted did a great job of outlining the government-wide nature of the conversations that we're having and one of the things that you end up noticing fairly quickly is that it requires kind of a systems thinking approach because you really have this network of service providers in the community you have OPM kind of at the core we have a number of federal and Commercial shared service providers and then you have agencies and all of us are working together to try to provide services to the federal Workforce you know in my introduction what I pointed out is that the the offices that I lead focus on defining standards and then helping agencies to operationalize those standards but really a lot of what's going on across the community is both agencies and shared service providers are working very hard to modernize and upgrade their systems the platforms and the services that they can provide through those to the employees so first of all the standards end up being enormously important in order to do all the things that we're talking about and to do that in sort of a systems-wide approach and so OPM actually over the last several years including predating my time there have been working across the agencies to build a set of business process and data standards that the community could could agree on and uh just within the last few months we've gotten to a point of completion where those standards are now publicly available we made them available for industry and public comment for the first time earlier this year and they're now posted in complete form on a website GSA website called ussm.gov which houses a lot of shared services information um but we expect those standards to be really influential both in uh you know sort of improving the conversation between industry and government in terms of how these you know functions and things get done but they're also critical then to being able to pull the data together from the agencies and make sense of it uh in the way that Ted was talking about building government-wide dashboards analytic tools pictures that the that the entire Community can can see and use to make better decisions um and then the the modernization efforts that the agencies and ssps are going through are critical because if you don't have modern it platforms and systems that adhere to these standards it's really difficult then to get the right data in a timely manner with high quality how is that impacting experience as you see it well you know I could answer that question on a variety of levels right in terms of the the state of employee experience it it's widely variable I would say today from from agency to agency across the community that's one of the things that I think we observe but it's also a a big focus of the current Administration and of the president's management agenda as you pointed out I mean it's a huge um it's a huge focus of pillar one within the within the PMA and a lot of the things that we're that we're doing um one of the things that I see is a big move within agencies to improve uh employee experience by improving the state of things like self-service the integration of processes and workflows both HR and and workflows that extend beyond just HR to facilities and security and elsewhere but also in terms of just giving employees better access to their own data right so when we talk about empowering the workforce with data part of it is kind of at the systemic level in terms of how we pull that data to make better decisions part of it quite frankly is improving employee experience by giving them better access to their own data which is a lot of what the more modern HR it systems enable people to do yeah I mean having access to data is very important understanding what to do with it and what it means something additional we can talk about that more in a bit but I just wanted to give you a chance to give the um the cusmo and a lot of business a little plug how do agencies get access to to your services if we have agencies listening that want to dive into the modernization process well absolutely uh so the first um the first answer that is just just reach out uh we have um email boxes HR qsmo opm.gov h-r-l-o-b at oppm.gov but we are actually working with several agencies who are moving forward with these hrit modernization efforts and you know one of the things that we're finding is we've done a lot of work to inventory the systems and the modernization efforts that that agencies are are going through one of the things you find when you do that is there really is a fairly finite number of commercial I i t companies that agencies are are working with and so it really behooves us to to kind of put our thinking caps on together figure out how we standardize requirements as well as how we can communicate with those it vendors together and um but that helps us kind of clarify our demand signal to the market as as well as you know do a better job of negotiating for features and functions and price and things of that nature so that the short answer is is just reach out we're here in our line is always open very good uh Melvin I I want to I want to jump over to you now and you know you have a huge responsibility keeping OPM systems running having been a CIO I mean I know it it's a very complicated job so but it's more than just systems Within OPM you have a much wider scope of responsibilities can you talk a little bit about the range of systems and requirements that that your office manages now no thanks I mean that's that's you know when you stop and think about it uh I I like the way Ted talked about it I mean we've got USAJobs USA Staffing USA learning you know and those those systems cover the the plethora of the entire federal government uh and then we've got all sorts of retirees and so we've got we've got every every system that touches every employee even including you know our federal health benefits systems that we kind of some of them are outsources but we still provide oversight management for and so that all that the richness of that data uh is is huge and so you know how do we how do we share that data in a way that you know agencies can leverage and and I go back to Steve's point about you know these these government-wide dashboards and we had we've had great success but it it was bumpy in in the beginning uh as Ted can attest and and the bumps was really around the inequities I think around modernization and then just our Federated approach and and our ability to become more Federated and and being able to do it in a in a manner that's safe and secure I mean we recently got the new cyber security order on multi-factor authentication where all of our systems have to be MFA by the end of the calendar year well that's gonna that's gonna also impact our ability to share data and so just having the you know trying to figure out a way to maintain um some level of a transparency and consistency and do it in a safe and secure manner um so that we don't create inequities of data to where we we have the Haves and the have-nots and so we don't want to leave agencies behind that might be um less modern than other agencies and so that's that's kind of what we're trying to do right now um and and we're making great strides and I'm happy to have uh partnered with Ted and and Steve on that specifically around the government where I died was because those are paying great dividends for us uh and for the entire federal government so that that's pretty much where we are with that yeah I mean the the dashboard sound like a big opportunity you know to create some Equity around the data that everyone has right you know we we only know what we know or data we have access to now once everybody has you can take different approaches you can talk a little bit about what what it takes to get these dashboards up and running um how how complex it is how do people get access to it where you know where do these dashboards live and you know uh Melvin feel free to get started and Ted jump in if you'd like well I I noted that they they started with just some basic HR data I know we started with some of the deia work early on um in sharing the deia data uh with government agencies and we started the robot out and expand that and then we started to bring on uh more federal agencies as we again as we began to solve some of our technology authentication challenges with access to the dashboards and the systems I think we just cracked the nut uh on some of our DOD Partners until now we're able to share uh share that data with them it's a chat out I'll punt that to you uh on on where we are with some of those but that's I know that's been huge yeah I mean on the technical side you know Melvin's team has been just fantastic this is a you know first in government type of effort it really is solving some of those um government-wide challenges that the I was talking about with the CDO Council so it's really exciting to see that and have this uh great partnership you know one of the uh aspects of this in terms of development making sure we're building the right products um it kind of goes back to the customer experience or employee experience it's really around human-centered design you know I think about you know being in the CIO shop in USDA at the department you can be somewhat disconnected from the agencies if you're not careful I think even more so at OPM government-wide so we've been very careful and intentional about using human Center design and ideation sessions and bringing in the agencies and customers to help us understand what are all the common questions that we need to be answering and what are the ones that we need to be answering first and foremost and so we've built those teams around iterative development getting feedback from our customers and then piloting these tools so we're in the process now of starting a government-wide rollout that will move into the fall for some of these core products the other I think really helpful thing is is you know as Steve talked about is this system's thinking right that we're able to meet with agencies around a common set of data a common set of insights and and make them better at scale but it also is going to enable us to have a a better level of maturity or around common definitions as we're engaging with the data analytics Community to practice with partitioners across government so I think it's the starting point for not only the technical enablement but a ramping up of our capacity with with the largest Workforce in the in the country we probably have the largest number of HR analysts in the country so how can we how can we best leverage that you know together uh while making sure that agencies need to answer their their agency specific questions as well can I offer the same uh uh opportunity for uh for a plug for this work uh how do agencies get involved if not uh we have somebody on you know listening who wants to participate in this how do they go about getting involved well we have established a new role at agencies this is very new it's called the human capital data Champion so those individuals are going to be working with us to drive adoption of these products and we'll be over overseeing you know access to opm's data products they're also be focused on improving the time andness and quality of the data that's sent to OPM since there is that important feedback loop between what agencies submit and what they end up seeing in these products we also have and Steve can talk more about this perhaps the human capital data analytics Community or practice that meets monthly any feedback on the dashboards you can reach out to me directly theodore.com opm.gov or data driven Workforce at opm.gov if you want to email directly and Steve just building on that real quick I know in some of the conversations we've had you've talked a lot about you know you're only as good as the data you're getting you know you're trying to make decisions if you have incomplete data you might not make the right decision what do what are you and the cusemo doing to strengthen you know that connection between uh the data you need and the data you have yeah well so I mean first and foremost as Ted was mentioning one of the things we did is we we stood up this data analytics community of practice um just about a year ago actually we did that under the auspices of the chico Council and a working group that they stood up which was a data working group under the chico Council so you know data data analytics and data analytics capabilities are a Hot Topic and something that people care about across that community so when we realized that we stood up this community of practice but within just a few months we had literally over 350 people from across a variety of agencies uh signed up as part of this community the community meets on a monthly basis um and a lot of those meetings tend to be kind of show and tell with different agencies coming and kind of just sort of discussing what they've done what you know observations they've made or finding things they've been able to to do and and to share um but as this evolves and matures we're also finding that that Community is a great source for Staffing projects and things of that nature so you know um the OMB memo that came out earlier this year on organizational health and performance I think really kind of lit a fire and created an impetus for agencies to make better and sort of a more concerted use of data both human capital data and Mission data to make decisions around things like return to office and things of that nature we've used the connectivity that we've built with the data analytics Community Practice as a as a way of both getting agencies familiar with these tools that OPM is building talk to each other about you know the things that they've done and we're going to be standing up things like office hours where agency Personnel can come in and kind of learn from each other or from OPM to just get a sense of you know you know what's some of the leading Minds in the community are thinking and doing with that data right now very good Melvin how do these uh Concepts that tendency we're talking about apply internally to HR ID systems and data at OPM so one of the things that we've been doing and I'll I'll take what we've been doing on postal which is you know our our newest initiative you know we've been you know using ideation and journey maps to kind of lay out what it is that we wanted to do with our postal implementation and as a result of that we were able to you know deliver you know one of our major modules which was carrier connect with within five months uh and so that refining that that approach and then looking at it going forward you know how do we take that to the next level so we're trying to build a culture of of leveraging the lessons that we have learned based on the data that we have that we have and then ask ourselves a new question you know what what is it that we need to learn next and then what date is available uh in order to answer that question so that's that's helped us out a lot the other thing that that Ted and both Steve mentioned is that you know we've got a huge upskilling going on and so now um we're starting to look at you know how do we bring in the right talent but then upskill them going forward so we've got an Enterprise skills of going on where we're upskilling both um our existing employees but making sure we're hiring people that have the skills Ted had the luxury uh and I get to pick on him a little bit he had the luxury of building out a team from scratch so he got he got the hardest skills you know on day one which was helpful uh whereas in the CIO shop um we're building up that muscle and building those skills and so that's how we're approaching that going forward and and we're we're uh we're leveraging a lot of the best practices that that Ted has used as far as you know what do the skills of tomorrow look like and and what what do we need to do um our intern program has been phenomenal and so we're starting to use um use our interns to one Infuse ourselves with new uh early career talent that has a lot of the the data and analytics skills that we're going to need going forward so that's been extremely popular and extremely helpful um so that's that's what we're doing right now yeah I think you know you're making a a great point about um the data skills you've all sort of mentioned this you know the data is uh Timeless if you will you know the technology around it changes uh but if you understand the data and you understand how it flows through the government or through the agency out to OPM and what it means there are so many opportunities that will Avail themselves you know to you perfect to an individual professionally or to to the agency to take advantage of it uh irrespective of the underlying you know technology so I think that's an important message for people to take away from this data skills and you're where irrespective of where you are in your career enhance your day skills take advantage so let me let me let me pull on that thread for a little bit Don because the other piece that I want to highlight is is the reason the early career talent and the interns are so important is because they don't bring the same historical baggage that existing people bring and I don't mean that in a negative way but it's sometimes you know too much you already know what you think the answer is and the interns or the early career Talent are asking a different question they're asking a different art of tomorrow or a different art of what's possible that's helping to move our organization in a different direction and so they don't they don't know that they couldn't do something and so because they don't know that they couldn't do something they're doing it now and that's that's been key or our modernization is sometimes you know maybe you know too much and so I try not to pair my interns up with existing people in the organization we try to give them a fresh problem give them the new data that they have and let them figure out what the solution looks like and that's that's given us good results so far yeah that's a very important Ted you've had some early career folks on your team talk about that a little bit no that's a it's been a blessing and so you know Melvin was alluding to that I think um there's there's a couple of through lines here I think uh that could bring up relationship to what Melvin was just sharing which was really really good um you know we did actually utilize the US digital core and you know I've just heard very very positive things about that across the board in terms of tech Talent uh from agencies from what I've heard I've not heard a bad thing let's put it that way and we've had a very very positive experience bringing in um a a product manager and a data scientist using the US digital core so really exciting to get you know those fresh perspectives into the agency quickly and both of those individuals have been a core part of some of the products and services we've been building the the other connection I could draw that kind of ties together the whole conversation today is is really around the relationship especially with this technical Talent um with the technology that we have once they arrive so you know what we what we have found is that we do have the ability to recruit top talent into government the mission is unparalleled the state department was hiring 50 data scientists they brought in a young woman named Charlotte McClintock who within the first year was providing on the ground support with analysis and climate negotiations in Egypt what are what an amazing opportunity to be able to contribute to the business of government but what is also true is that we will not be able to retain this Talent if they don't have access to the right tools and Technology to be able to use the skills that they have and so our modernization efforts I think directly support especially on the technical side retaining the talent uh and and being able to enable them so I like how Melvin talked about giving them the space to be able to really utilize their skills that was something we found to be true at USDA where certain agencies had trouble keeping the right talent and once they had the right tools they found that to be less much less challenging so that is one thing that we do need to address in government people want their work life to look like the real life I hear that all the time you know from a technology perspective Steve jump in here then I want to get to an audience question that builds on what Ted was just suggesting sir I just wanted to draw a line from this to another aspect of this conversation which is the changes that modernization brings in terms of the type of talent that we actually need in the workforce so one of the things that we're finding is we work with agencies and they are talking about implementing you know software as a service cloud-based Solutions improving modernizing their HR platforms and whatnot it really changes the nature of the HR function the people who are using these platforms what types of skills we need in that Workforce so you know when we talk about empowering the workforce with data you also need to be thinking about the workforce is itself a moving Target in terms of the profile of what that Workforce is comprised of and you know we need to we need to think about that as well it's a it's a good point and it ties to another audience question which I'll I'll deal I'll deal with first and then get to the second one um but this suggests uh some of the audience is suggesting can we pair uh older employees and not necessarily age but the when I say old people who've maybe more experienced in the agency who probably have a lot of uh very important information about the agency and policies and processes and maybe what's worked in the past with some of these uh employees that are newer who might look at the data and see something different who might not know that we tried and failed at a project in the past have you had any success or you've tried to um create some pairings to maybe get more out of that combination I have and and I I did it later after they had come up with the idea because I didn't want them to be restricted by that we tried that and it didn't work because you never step in the river at the same time and so every time you step in the river it's a new set of water and so the climate and the conditions for that change are different the people are different the times are different the technology is different everything's different nothing Remains the Same and so just because we tried it and it failed doesn't mean that the solution wasn't good it just may not have been the right time for the solution uh it may not been may not have been the right climate for the solution and so I let them the solution first then bring in the uh the existing employees to give me the risks associated with things that I need to avoid as we roll it out that way I don't stymied the creativity of the person trying to um solve the problem because if they're already starting with it we've already failed now I've brought down their excitement about the order was possible and so that's right that's what I'm approach it is creativity yeah and that's that has worked for us and what what about this idea that you know that you might have an employee who's been around a long time and maybe they don't feel like they need to uh and build data skills you know move in do something different you you find the the marriage between that uh that that newer employee and the more experienced employees that have you seen that inspiration flow into that you know more experience points hey I want to learn either some of these new technologies or I want to learn about data I want to be able to participate in this because I have these skills with everything I know well I could be really impactful in the organization Ted you look like you want to say something well I might just uh you know talk about the way in which certain skill sets that we may have had for a long time are coupled with new skill sets to create a better outcome right so for example you know at opium we've been collecting data I think well for for many many years um we've also been doing analysis on that that informs policy I think one of the things that we're also bringing to the table to combine on our teams is to bring like the skill sets we talked about which is human-centered design so that the products we're building are more suited to the agency needs and so that we can create the incentive to improve data collection so we want to show I think with with our with you know the mix of skill sets that we have for folks who've been here a long time and those who have joined us more recently how all of our work fits together and how maybe some of the new competencies that we're bringing on board complement their work and actually help them achieve their work their their the goals that they've had more easily again if we create products that meet the agency needs there's an incentive for them to send us more high quality data so that's the kind of conversation we've been having with our teams is is thinking about it in those terms uh it you know we may need to bring some new skill sets to to make it more interdisciplinary and to to virtuously you get the right data you get the right better products more reason to dig out more data to create more products um just one other question I want to get to um there there's a note here about what um if anything is OPM doing or can OPM do maybe this is the line of HR line of business uh Steve where um you know some agencies have funding for these HR it modernizations and employee experience and human centered design and other agencies might not we experi experience this at USDA when I was there uh certainly and it's just um the nature of government at times we're not funded all agencies are not funded the same way or they might have different priorities where the money goes agencies without the resources maybe be prepared to take advantage of these ideas and services and be positioned that if they get some money they could get really far fast because they've done this pre-work yeah well I mean so this is a real discussion topic that we're having here at OPM as we're trying to you know upgrade the community's uh availability and and use of of data and data analytics but this is really kind of a classic example of where something like shared services comes into play right uh the fact that you know if you have an agency whether it's a you know a National Finance Center or an interior Business Center or an OPM who has the least horses and a mission that's you know uh oriented towards being able to you know build a particular service or capability once and then allow a lot of different constituents to utilize it um it's you know that that whole model is designed you know specifically to mitigate or defray those types of issues and and this is what we do find is that if you look across the community the the agencies that are making the best use and getting the best value out of the existing shared service providers tend to be smaller agencies that don't have a lot of resources to build their own HR systems and and departments themselves and they're getting a lot of value out of that when it comes to these data analytics tools you know what we what we observe right off of that is there are there's more people doing human capital data analytics outside of OPM but you also observe that that does sort of align itself very much into like these haves and have-nots kind of the way that you're talking about and I think what we need to do is kind of build a system where OPM can learn from the agencies that may be more advanced in some respects than we are but then we can institutionalize some of the great things that those agencies are doing and make that available to the community at large and and that's you know sort of the the strategy one strategy anyway for you know enabling the agencies that don't have those resources to get access to those capabilities well I think I think sometimes the hardest part is getting started on a project and you know whether um you know it's internal resources or it is uh funding you think you need for uh you know a contractor somebody to come help um getting started you know has all of these roadblocks you know I need the I don't have the people I don't have the money but if people turn to the to the excuse mode to the HR line of business there's there are materials or resources that can get me over that hurdle of getting started well now you have some momentum and um you know momentum has a lot of power in the government in terms of getting things funded and yeah not only that but I mean we're collaborating with agencies in a couple of different cases on the building out of like technology modernization fund proposals in addition to kind of these you know starter resources that we have artifacts and whatnot from within the Cusco and the HR line in business we can also work with agencies to develop strategies and get some of you know more advanced seed funding so that there are a variety of kind of stair step approaches for um for doing the kinds of things you're talking about so um this is that that's great I didn't I didn't know you were doing that I think a lot of people in the audience will find that very interesting and again reach out to Steve if there's interest in getting started um I I'm curious for all of you've done a lot of these projects uh and you're in the middle of them now let's assume that we're using these resources to be provided Steve Steve uh described and we have we have money for Technologies and these things those aren't problems necessarily uh where do agencies get started Beyond you know these first steps like where do you start do you start with the process do you start with the data do you start with the current systems what is your experience tell you Melvin I'm curious where and the project you're describing where where did you start I I started with one what was the problem that we're trying to solve I started there I started just I tried I started small by just trying to get the low-hanging fruit of you know where is it that we could to your point build momentum and then Define what the problem is that we we have to solve and then looking at you know what is my current capacity to solve that problem I I think that if you even if you try to solve a problem that you know is there and you don't have the capacity you don't build a momentum that you need to go forward so that's the approach that we've taken is you know defining something that's gonna a problem that's gonna deliver deliver value for the employees and for the for the business we start there and we start small and then we look at you know what's our capacity to match that and then the other point that I'll make is is I know we're we're running short on time the other point that I will make is sustainment and consistency for the long term um to Ted's point we we can bring in the early career challenge because we've got more modern tools and we're solving more Modern Problems But if we don't as we say inside CIO if we don't get current and stay current then we're not going to be able to maintain the momentum and the talent that that we continue to bring in so getting current and staying current is one of our you know it's one of our guiding principles here inside the CIO that's a it's a good suggestion focus on the problem you're solving and you know my experience when that problem has a strong tie to the mission and you can point to a mission outcome you have another you have some Rocket Fuel tied to that especially as you're looking for money uh Ted I'm curious from where you sit where the agencies you know get started so we we know we got to figure out what the what the problem is what we're trying to accomplish number one what what comes next from your perspective well I I think from an analytics perspective you know very similar to to Melvin's comments you know I'm very bullish on OPM and our ability to provide Solutions at scale we're the only agency that has this data and so there are just so many common problems that we can solve efficiently for agencies but I think the approach that an agency would use would be the same which is engaging with customers through Divergent convergent thinking exercises and really asking them the biggest and best questions that they can come up with and really getting them in a place where they're comfortable asking those questions because they may have an experience of not having access to the data that they need to answer those questions but to really think about our broad Vision we got to get them into a space where they're comfortable saying I'm not sure how we're going to get there but here's really the question I would want to answer and of course we're gonna have to start with the data we have access to and that's what we've done with these initial products but we've also uncovered some uh other uh data assets that may be beneficial for us to answer those long-term questions and because of the scale and the ability of us to provide value you know at that broad scale I think we're going to be able to get around to those other questions as well as we go forward and build toward that so again I think I think the human centered design principles apply uh anywhere and really should start with those as you're building any kind of analytics or Technical Solutions to be talking to your customers pulling them into the conversation asking what you know to Melvin's Point what are you trying to accomplish or how do you do your work what what is your expectation as you interact with the system that's going to change maybe the way you approach your your project and I think that excellent advice again and you know Steve just building on this theme of getting started and being successful um I could be at an agency and come to the cusemo and I could say help and you're going to say well you need to do some work you know I just can't you know beyond what's the problem whatever what what is The Upfront kind of activity an agency needs to be prepared to be successful in interacting with the with accuse mode and taking advantage of these you know if you're going to come with the technology modernization fund request I have to do something beforehand surely what are those well yeah so there's there's a couple of different dimensions to that I mean one one aspect is to really think about your business case for what you're trying to accomplish and this kind of goes back to Melvin's point about make sure you know a problem we're trying to solve and things of that nature and so that's particularly relevant if you're preparing like a TMF proposal and whatnot but the other aspect I would say that we've kind of touched on here is just get smart and make sure that you know what resources you really have that you should be leveraging throughout the community so that you're not unnecessarily Reinventing the wheel yourself part of that is get to know the standards the standards have been built for a reason and our drive as we go forward is going to be to make sure that both agencies and our industry Partners understand and have a chance to converse about and and help optimize but you know agree on how to use these standards so that it'll help us help us all go faster and um you know I I think what we're seeing in the realm of hrit modernization is more and more receptivity to agencies and and other entities getting together and collaborating on requirements and things of that nature part of that frankly is just driven by the market itself if you look at what's going on across the market space there is like I said a finite number of these large-scale software as a service platforms that are available they they don't lend themselves to customization in the way that that previous generations of this technology have it actually um leads to a situation where it's much more reasonable for agencies to get together and say you know what are our joint requirements so the the the fact that when when agencies feel like they're on their own and they feel like they need to go and invent all this on their own they tend to do it a lot less efficiently and uh you know the the era that we're moving into I think is one that's just not going to be affordable much less desirable but I think I think there's strength in numbers to to your point and common requirements I think can drive us all forward faster because you know what that 2B is I'd offer it's hard to um get mindshare around the 2B if you don't understand the as is and you know I I you know meet with the different cios and other it leaders you know pretty frequently and I always share that you know you don't need to buy one of these Technologies you're describing Steve uh to get started you need to really understand how the work and the data flow through the organization today for whatever you know processes you want to change first and while that requires hidden resources to people to do it it doesn't necessarily require an investment in a technology we get those things down now do it's a lot easier I think in some ways to think about the process should be once you know what the process is in my sense is that might uncover some of the data Ted that you're describing that you know data needs that people have because they don't have the data they don't know what it means they don't know where it comes from and these things are as you're all describing highly interrelated today and you know I think that's also an important takeaway for the for the audience it's not just an hrit system it's not just a data project it's not just a modernization project you know we can work together a lot of these a lot of these themes and uh you know again just speak from experience that drives the conversation you know forward it makes it very current and highly um you know I think very interesting to the rest the rest of the agency through these these things together they are really um really related so we we are coming to the end of our um presentation but I want to give everybody a chance for a final thought or two uh Melvin um what would you would you want to make sure the audience um leaves with today I think one one of the things that often gets overlooked at least from my side is is everybody focuses on the technology we don't focus on the people and you know everything that we do inside of CIO we've built a a change an organizational change Management Group to help manage the changes of everything that we deliver from a technology perspective and so I I think it's important to know that just turning the technology on doesn't make you more modern you gotta train the people on how to use it and you got to solve the business problem for which they have and so that would be my my takeaway is is don't just pick a technology for the sake of picking the technology and just because you've turned it on doesn't make you modern you got to be able to facilitate the data that people need to make decisions with it and you got to show them how to use it so that they can get to the solutions that they're looking for thank Melvin great great Point change management uh Ted final thought I'll I'll go back to a couple things that Melvin and Steve brought up I think Steve talked about it as systems thinking so one thing that I didn't think we talked about in this conversation was you know going out to whoever whatever agency partners may be on the line you know we're looking for your ideas we want the Innovation to continue at OPM we wanted to continue at the agency level we've had a couple of examples of where an agency has developed a data solution that we're now you know scaling NIH developed a great tool around febs which we have incorporated into our ideas around the the dashboards we're now going to build for agencies so please keep up the Innovation and we want to work with you and uh and be able to scale wherever possible so that's also important Steve you you get the final thought final final thought all right my final thought is this is just really an exciting time to be part of the public sector Mission and that should be true whether you are in government or one of our industry partners and there's a lot of work to be done amongst all of us but you can just sense the excitement and the opportunity we're making some real progress but we need everybody in this fight and um really appreciate everybody's interest in this topic thank you Steve um you know that's that unfortunately this is all the time we have for our conversation I feel like we could definitely keep keep going there's a lot to this I mean we could do a part two one of these days but you know I think this idea of employee experience the focus we have on it just like you said uh Steve it is um a great time to be a part of it we finally have mind share that this is this is really important and I think every time you make a federal employees life a little bit easier uh it's a small but really important step towards building uh the government we all deserve and you know these projects are not easy you provided you all provided some great ideas on how to get started and how to move forward um just the the idea of making sure that there's change management you know is always uh often lost I'll say not always often lost so um do these Pro just don't buy the technology figure out how to train people and get them to use it successfully you know the system's thinking I thought wasn't was an excellent point you both you know hit at the end and um I I really like the point about strength in numbers you know when agencies come together they can accomplish a lot and um hopefully everybody uh you know heard that OPN the OPM team here is accessible the cusemo is accessible Ted's accessible you know reach out you know with opportunities and ideas and I guarantee you Melvin will talk to you as well if you you want to understand what they're what they're doing at OPM so we're very fortunate to have these these three with us today I cannot thank you guys enough for doing this it means a lot to me that you're all here thank you um to the audience thanks for attending let's continue this conversation there's a lot we can all do in the space I just want to quickly thank the DGI team the servicenow team that made this conversation possible today and Mike with that with that I'll turn it back to you for some closing remarks thank you Jonathan uh you're a fantastic moderator I'd also like to thank Melvin Ted Steve and Jonathan for sharing their thought leadership and insights on empowering the government of Workforce with data uh we're going to pull up our quick poll question here foreign we have our 9 30 Gov program coming up Wednesday September 6th and it's free for government Academia and Industry so if you'd like for us to register you please check that box and if you're from industry we'll send you registration information it's a five-track program AI Cloud cyber zero trust data management what we discussed today Enterprise architecture and Records management a quick uh highlight Jonathan will be doing a fireside chat with Ben prime a senior advisory solution architect with servicenow on navigating the road to zero trust as part of that program on September 6th last thing remember to complete your post event survey that's where you notify DGI you would like CPE credits we also want your input on future topics I'd also like to thank the audience for tuning in today we very much appreciate your continued support on behalf of the digital government Institute team this concludes today's program have a great day everyone